Technology for Developing Children’s Language and Literacy

Technology for Developing Children's Language and Literacy:

Bringing Speech-Recognition to the Classroom

Prepared for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center by Marilyn Jager Adams Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences Brown University Providence, Rhode Island 2011

Technology for Developing Children's Language and Literacy: Bringing Speech-Recognition to the Classroom

Technology for Developing Children's Language and Literacy by Marilyn Jager Adams and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

Suggested citation: Adams, M.J. (2011). Technology for Developing Children's Language and Literacy: Bringing Speech Recognition to the Classroom, New York, NY: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.

Marilyn Jager Adams 139 Horseneck Road Westport, MA 02790

phone: 508-636-5352 email: marilyn.adams@

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop

CONTENTS

1. Introduction............................................................................................................................. 3 1.1. The Educational Challenge............................................................................................................ 3 1.2. The Reading Challenge.................................................................................................................. 5 1.3. Overview of this Report................................................................................................................ 5

2. Basic Reading Fluency........................................................................................................................... 7 2.1. Developing Basic Reading Fluency............................................................................................... 7 2.1.1. Getting Children to Read in the Conventional Classroom................................................... 8 2.1.2. What's so Good about Guided Oral Reading?.................................................................... 10 2.2. Summary..................................................................................................................................... 11

3. Technology for Promoting Basic Reading Fluency: Automatic Speech-Recognition Technologies.. 13 3.1. Is Automatic Speech Recognition Up to the Challenge?............................................................ 13 3.2. Detecting Word Recognition Difficulties....................................................................................14 3.2.1. The Problem of Pronunciation Variability........................................................................... 14 3.2.2. The Nature and Frequency of Reading Dysfluencies........................................................... 16

4. Using Dysfluencies to Monitor Reading Difficulty.............................................................................. 19 4.1. Reconfiguring the Speech Recognizer to "Hear" Pauses.............................................................. 19 4.2. Distinguishing Symptomatic from Acceptable Pauses................................................................ 20 4.3. Implementing the Pause Factor in a Speech Recognition-Based Reading Tutor........................ 21 4.3.1. How Well Can Pauses Diagnose Difficulties: Clinicians vs. Computer.............................. 21 4.3.2. Testing the System's Tutoring Performance......................................................................... 22 4.4. Designing for Impact and Usability............................................................................................. 23

5. Beyond Basic Fluency Support............................................................................................................ 25 5.1. Prosody and Understanding........................................................................................................ 25 5.2. Automatic Speech-Recognition for Managing Interactive Learning.......................................... 30 5.3. Speech-Recognition and Reading Assessment............................................................................ 31

6. Education, Literacy, and Technology: Concluding Comments............................................................ 35 6.1. On the Importance of the Problem............................................................................................. 35 6.2. On the Nature and Importance of the Solution.......................................................................... 37

7. References............................................................................................................................................ 39

2 | Technology for Developing Children's Language and Literacy

Technology for Developing Children's Language and Literacy:

Bringing Speech-Recognition to the Classroom

Prepared for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center by Marilyn Jager Adams Brown University Providence, Rhode Island 2011

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